Latest report by Kaspersky indicates that over 500 vulnerabilities were discovered in routers in 2021, including 87 critical ones.
The threats stemming from vulnerable routers affect both households and organisations, moving beyond email compromises to physical home security. Despite this, people rarely think about the security of their devices.
According to research, 73% of users have never thought about upgrading or securing their router, making it one of the biggest threats impacting the Internet of Things today.
Here, Kaspersky experts recommend eight ways to protect your router from cyberattack:
1. To buy smart appliances second-hand is an unsafe practice. Their firmware could have been modified by previous owners to give a remote attacker full control over your smart home.
2. Don’t forget to change the default password on your router. Go for a complex one and change it regularly.
3. Don’t share serial numbers, IP addresses or other sensitive information regarding your smart devices like router on social networks.
4. Use WPA2 encryption – it’s the most secure for data transfer.
5. Disable remote access in the router ‘s settings. If remote access is still needed, you should disable it when it is not in use.
6. For more security, you can select a static IP address and disable DHCP, as well as protect Wi-Fi with a MAC filter.
These actions lead to you having to manually configure the connection of various additional devices to the router, so the process becomes longer and more complicated.
Nevertheless, it will be much more difficult for an intruder to penetrate the local network. Be aware and always check the latest information on discovered router vulnerabilities.
7. Having decided on a particular app or device, be sure to stay in the loop about updates and discovery of vulnerabilities. Install all updates released by the developers in a timely fashion.
8. Consider installing a special security solution that can help protect your home network and all connected devices.
